An ode.
Libraries are a community sanctuary.
As a child I felt this way about my public school library - a lofty, light-filled space with weightless kites hanging from its windowed ceiling and storybooks lining every wall.
It was the first thing you saw when you walked into the building and its magic beckoned. I remember every step of it better than any classroom and l loved it far more than the gymnasium or playground.
I can still see the reading pit we sat in as children. We raced to compete for the corner spot as Ms. Harper, the librarian read our favourite stories in a voice that held command even though it was almost a whisper.
As I moved into adolescence, the school library was an escape for different reasons. A quiet break from dreaded chemistry class or the chance at a minor interaction with a major crush. Some agenda almost always seemed to accompany those visits.
But that was less the case with our beloved community library - another long brick building lined with windows where deer would appear in the distance, even on the haziest of days.
Always the popular hideaway, the possibilities between the pages were like reflections of the future and our then youth.
I read my way through those confusing and exciting years, riddled with anxiety about things that didn’t really matter but mattered nonetheless.
Stories were the thing that nurtured me all the way into adulthood, and as the years go by and the space around me fills with the needs and opinions of others, that conscious treasure of quietude remains a deep need of my own.
This distinct kind of quiet lives only in a place that honours something big and important. It is the result of an unwritten, understood law. A covenant that we handle ourselves with the utmost humility among pages and pages and pages of intelligence.
My memory recalls vividly the conscious choice to practice reclusion in its hidden nooks during my undergrad years, even if it wasn't exam time. I would sit between the shelves of its highest floors, studying between daydreams. I would walk down the aisles, slowly, letting my fingers run along the spine of a thousand books, sometimes stopping to see where I landed - undoubtedly on something I had never heard of.
I would pull it from the shelf, crack it open (like I still do), read a random page and call it fate, searching for the hidden message among all the words like it was guidance from the library gods on what I was to do with my life.
As I sometimes wallow in what’s been missing, that familiar warmth which emanates from essential institutions intensifies my longing for this immersive therapy.
To go to a place where the truth is preserved and history awaits - protected refuge with rooms that give us more room to discover and grow.
A space that defines education as a human right. Where we open our hearts and calm our minds.
The library is the only place that tells you to get lost and means well.